Mohun was breakfasting with Livingstone on a cold, gusty January morning, that succeeded a night of heavy drinking and heavier play. The colonel would see him through one of these readily enough, but if there was even a single female face present he would retreat in disgust and contempt unutterable. Guy had been hit so hard that it made him graver than usual as he thought of it, though he was tolerably inured and indifferent to evil fortune; so the conversation languished during the meal. After it was over, Mohun rose to light a cigar, while his companion took up a pile of letters and began to glance at them listlessly. Suddenly the former dropped the match from his hand, starting in irrepressible astonishment. He had seen strong men die hard, mangled and shattered by sabre or bullet, but he had never heard a sound so terribly significant of agony as the dull, heavy groan that just then burst from Livingstone's lips. In those few seconds his face had grown perfectly livid; his eyes were riveted upon a small note that he held in his shaking fingers; they glittered strangely, but there was no meaning or expression in their fixed stare. "In the name of God, what has happened?" Ralph asked. Guy's lips worked and moved, but no sound came from them, except an irregular catching of the breath and a gasping rattle in the throat. Mohun took the note from his hand without his seeming to be aware of it, and read it through. These were the words: "I have tried very hard to persuade myself that you never received the letter I wrote to you two months ago. I think you would have answered it, for you would know how much I must have suffered before my pride broke down so utterly. Yet I could not have risked being scorned a second time if I had not learned yesterday that my life must now be reckoned by weeks, if not by days. I do not know if I shall be allowed to see you if you come. But you will come; will you not? Dear, dear Guy, I can not die as I ought to do, contentedly, unless I speak to you once again. In spite of all, I will sign my last letter "Your own CONSTANCE BRANDON." It was dated Ventnor. Hard and cynical as he was, Mohun was thoroughly shocked and grieved; but the urgency of the crisis brought back the prompt decision of thought and purpose that were habitual to the trained soldier. He sprang to his feet, alert and ready for action, as he would have done in the old times, from his bivouac, to meet a night-surprise of the wild Hungarians. "Get every thing ready," he said to the servant, who entered at that moment; "your master is going to England immediately. The train starts for Havre at two o'clock. You will catch the night-boat for Southampton."